A great American institution is falling by the wayside and nobody seems to notice. No, I'm not talking about honesty or integrity, or some other nebulous quality that you can't really put your finger on. I'm talking about something real and pure. I'm talking about swap meets.
Traditionally, swap meets were a place where people would go to clean out their garages. You could go there and find row after row of second hand items--everything from kitchenware to black lights, bicycles to file cabinets, all at prices ranging from reasonable to down-right cheap. Now, these things are getting harder and harder to find at swap meets, replaced primarily by venders selling new items. Gone are the electric guitars and used patio furniture. Now it's all the three S's, Socks, Shirts, and Beanie Babies.
It's getting to the point where going to the swap meet is like going to the mall. The largest swap meet in town has about 90% new merchandise. And of the venders who sell used stuff, most are there week after week. They probably go to garage sales and pick things up at a reasonable price and then try to sell them for a dollar or so less than they would cost new.
My wife and I went to the swap meet a couple of weeks ago to sell stuff. The one thing that I noticed was that hardly anybody haggled. I set my prices a bit higher than I wanted, so I could knock off a buck or two and people would feel like that were getting a deal, but it was like nobody knew how to play the game. We are turning into a society that is incapable of striking a bargain.
If this continues, we are going to be at the mercy of car salesmen. Think about it, what's the biggest thing to happen in new car sales in the last couple of years, no-haggle pricing. The dealers claim that allows them to be more at ease with their customers. Of course, they're at ease they're making enough more off each sale, to pay for a semester at Stanford.
That's only the tip of the iceberg. This country has been getting the shaft for decades from military contractors, but at least now we are getting decent hardware that we can trounce the crap out of Iraq with when we need to. But what's going to happen in twenty years when the people who are too embarrassed to haggle over the price of a new car are out trying to keep our armed forces stocked with the tools of the trade.
Of course, I'm rather selfish. My only real problem here is that it's next to impossible to find a good deal at the swap meet these days. Then again maybe I'm looking at this all wrong. Maybe, I should just become a military contractor. Then I could afford to shop at swap meets.
Nonsense on Stilts was written and created by Chris Sturhann.
Copyright © 1998 Chris Sturhann